$10,858: That's the price someone was willing to pay for each of two tickets to Barack Obama's inauguration, according to a StubHub ticket broker. Parade tickets are going for $495 and on up to $1,419, though, to be perfectly technical about it, there are no tickets yet. Says the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies web site (phew), "The public should also be aware that no website or other ticket outlet actually has inaugural swearing-in tickets to sell, regardless of what they may claim."

Tickets to the swearing-in ceremony on January 20th are distributed, for free, through members of Congress, so it is theoretically possible that some cash-strapped senators or representatives are looking to cash in on the once-in-a-lifetime perk. (Do we need another ethics committee investigation? Hmmm?) But it seems that the economic recovery we're looking for could be rooted in Barack Obama, the icon: what with sales of Obama Wins! newspaper front pages, phantom inaugural festivities tickets, and everything from t-shirts to mugs selling so well that it's clear the new "hotcakes" will be "Obama stuff," I think the key to the economy is Obama himself.

No news yet on tickets to the Inaugural Ball, which may not have the tear-jerking, history-making quality of a swearing-in ceremony, but is a lot more fun. What would you pay for tickets?

Radio, TV, infomercials, and phone calls--stop already. This election has been the longest one I can remember; it has gone on and on. At this point, hasn't everyone made up their mind? I made mine up shortly after the primaries. Will another ad or two make a difference?

Apparently the candidates think so. Obama spent a fortune last week renting time on every major station for his infomercial. He plans to release another ad today showing McCain's ties to Cheney. McCain, who doesn't have the war chest of money like Obama, went on Saturday Night Live to increase his reach. By far, the best part of the McCain campaign is Tina Fey's rendition of Sarah Palin.

The ads are endless. That is all you see on TV and if you try to escape in your car, they are on the radio. I try to hide in the house, but folks are coming to the door and calling me on the phone. At this point, I will vote for anyone who doesn't call me with a recorded message.

It raises the question whether this is the best way to do things. With so many folks struggling in this bleak economy, couldn't the political money be put to use helping people? It would be an interesting campaign if every dollar spent had to be matched with a charitable donation. Just think how many folks this could help.

I could enjoy the ads then, knowing that every dollar spent actually helped someone else. I would give more to the campaigns knowing that the money was put to good use. I can't wait until Tuesday is over.

Barbara Bartlein is the People Pro. For her FREE e-mail newsletter, please visit: The People Pro.

Last week I watched Sarah Palin struggling to find names and professions that had the same traction as Joe the Plumber. In the spirit of helpfulness, I offer these candidates:

1. Paradise, the prostitute
2. Klinton, the crack dealer
3. Wendell, the wife-beater
4. Uberdingle, the rapper
5. Miss Daunonyanees, the Dominatrix
6. Karl, the Marxist
7. Dagwood, the office grunt
8. Stan, the DMV clerk
9. Lynndie, the torturer
10. Michael, the documentary maker

I'd pay to watch the look on Michael Moore's face if she used the last one!

On a more serious note, I found this analysis of the upcoming election consistent with my view of past elections.

As November 4 draws closer, I've started to become a poll geek. While my favorite time-wasters used to include Facebook, YouTube, and eBay, I now blow at least a few minutes a day checking out the latest surveys on Yahoo and CNN. I've found myself obsessing over who Indiana is going to vote for, what Missouri is going to do, and whether or not West Virginia is will buck its previous trends. It's become like a television show in which the characters have regional accents, sport bizarre shapes, and have a freakish cousin who lives in the attic and is named "Alaska."

Along the way, one of my favorite sites has become Intrade. Basically a prediction market, it offers users the option of betting real money on the likelihood that certain events will come to pass. As the events become more likely, the price of a bid goes up, while the price goes down if they are less likely.

Right now, for example, the price of a bet that North Dakota will vote for Obama is $35, which means that the market believes that there's a 35% chance that Obama will win the state. By contrast, a bid for Oklahoma is currently at $3, which means that an intrepid bidder who had some inside info about Obamaniacs in Oklahoma could really clean up. In most cases, however, he or she would lose three bucks.

The site also offers other prediction questions. For example, there is currently a $35 bid that The Dark Knight will win the Oscar for Best Picture, while the last bid on the Dow trading below 7882.51 by the end of 2008 was $45. Essentially, if there is something that can be wagered on, this site probably offers the chance to do so.

For those of us who are addicted to information but don't like losing money, Intrade is a treasure trove. With thousands of people interacting on the site, its predictions often present the real-time effects of the latest events. This, of course, means that it's bookmarked on my browser and will remain so until the election or until Oklahoma goes for Obama, whichever comes first.

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. His money is on the election coming first.

Could someone please come up with an online tax calculator that includes all of each of John McCain's and Barack Obama's tax proposals? I wrote a few weeks ago about how alchemytoday.com came up with a tax calculator using data from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. Yesterday the Obama campaign came out with a tax calculator on its own website showing how much your own taxes will be under his plan.

I got a flurry of comments on the old post saying how Obama's tax calculator wasn't non-partisan. Um, yeah, I realize that. That's why I sent readers to this non-partisan tax calculator.

I still think we need a more comprehensive, non-partisan tax calculator that takes into account the various sources of income and deductions. (Though, the more complex a calculator is, the more it's like really doing your taxes and so unappealing.)

The Obama family has officially announced that they'll be getting an all-American mutt -- or at least a rescue dog. After Barack Obama and his wife Michelle made a public promise to their daughters to get a dog after the elections, animal groups got really excited. Since the Obamas don't have pets now, it seemed likely they could be swayed into one of the warring dog camps: those who buy purebreds and those who rescue mutts (and also purebreds) from shelters.

The American Kennel Club launched an online poll asking which breed they should purchase. More than 42,000 people voted and they chose the poodle, with the wheaten terrier coming in second. The AKC had narrowed the field down to breeds that don't cause allergies because one of the Obama girls is allergic to dogs. (And I think the poodle won because the other breeds were either small, creepy or both (like the Chinese Crested, which is mostly bald.)

Meanwhile, 50,000 animal lovers signed a petition from the Best Friends Animal Network, urging the Obamas to adopt a shelter dog. That doesn't necessarily mean they're getting a mutt. According to the Humane Society of the United States, about one-quarter of dogs in shelters are purebreds.

A few months ago, I got into an argument with a couple of my fellow Walletpop writers. I found myself standing out in favor of a federal fund to help distressed homeowners refinance their mortgages, and my colleagues were arguing (with some justification) that it was unfair to make them foot the bill for other peoples' incompetence.

It was a difficult argument for me; I'm as selfish as the next guy, and I'm not really all that excited about shelling out cash for somebody else's failed mortgage. On the other hand, it seemed to me that defaulted mortgages would lead to a lot of empty homes, plummeting real estate values, failing banks, imploding financial institutions, and so forth. I figured that, if we could keep people in houses and keep them paying mortgages, many of these problems could be averted. Sure, it would be unfair to all the homeowners who played by the rules, not to mention the renters (like me), who won't even benefit from stabilized home values. Still, with the country falling into a hole and the mess splashing everyone, assigning blame wasn't going to get us out.

Even though I rent, this crisis affects me in a variety of ways. For example, my wife works for an engineering firm. If the current banking crisis continues, it isn't hard to imagine a point at which the projects that she works on will go bankrupt from lack of credit. No credit equals no paycheck and, before I know it, we're applying for welfare and emergency assistance. The sad fact is that, even apart from dire predictions of runaway inflation and the collapse of the economy, most of us are only one or two degrees of separation away from the banking mess.

Using numbers from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the website AlchemyToday came up with a calculator to see how much Barack Obama would raise your taxes. It's a nifty device that should help clarify for people the big differences in economic policy in this election.

Are you making less than $603,000? If so, Obama isn't going to raise your taxes, the data show.

According to a Gallup Poll, 53% of Americans think Obama is going to raise their taxes, compared with just 34% who suspect the same of McCain. That means that at least 48% of Americans don't really understand what Obama is going to do and one-third don't understand what McCain is proposing. Where would so many people get the crazy idea that Obama's secret plan is to raise taxes? Well, it could be because John McCain tells them that every chance he gets.

Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

On Saturday, Barack Obama announced that he had picked Joe Biden as his running mate, and now MoveOn.org is giving away free "Obama/Biden 2008" bumper stickers. From the website:

You can get one Obama/Biden sticker for free. For a $3+ donation, we'll send you 5 stickers. For a $20+ donation, we'll send 50 stickers. Stickers may take 4-6 weeks to arrive.

Fill out this form.

There's that often-repeated saying that Harry Truman made famous: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Perhaps presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama is thinking ahead. He reportedly has promised his daughters that after the election this November, they'll get a family dog. That is, at least, what I've learned from the well regarded Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, which is also the nation's largest sanctuary for dogs. They've been circulating an email, which is being forwarded across the country, and was forwarded to me by a cousin of mine -- heck, maybe you've already read it -- that urges people to sign a petition asking Mr. Obama to get a dog from a shelter or a rescue group rather than a pet store.

As the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary explains, "With millions of homeless pets still being killed in shelters every year, please adopt your dog from a shelter or rescue group. Don't buy from a pet store or breeder."

They've gone as far as creating a web site, www.obamafamilydog.com, where they're asking people to sign this petition.

When I was a kid, my mother taught me that politics and religion were two subjects that one should never discuss. Unfortunately, those were always my two favorites. In the grand scheme of things, they strike me as the only two topics that really are worthy of continued, sustained discussion and reflection over the course of a lifetime. While I'm sure that there are people who are still talking about the Reuben Stoddard/Clay Aiken showdown of a couple of years ago, I would have to say that American Idol, Iron Man, and even the return of Indiana Jones must always take a back seat to the great battle between conservatism and liberalism and the question of free will.

For this reason, I particularly love Presidential election years, as it seems like it's the only time when it's socially acceptable to talk politics. Most of the time, people throw out a few questions to subtly suss out their conversational partner's political beliefs. If the two people agree, then the conversation rolls right along as they trade attacks on the demon candidate du jour. If not, conversation usually moves on to safer waters.

During election years, though, it seems like we all have an excuse for having tough talks about our hopes for the future, where we believe the country is headed, and all that fun stuff. Better yet, we get to sport T-shirts, bumper stickers, signs, tattoos, and assorted other paraphernalia that shows off our political beliefs. Recently, I discovered some particularly fun campaign swag. While the more staid among us are sporting mature, adult Obama and McCain buttons, the "McCain/Methuselah 2008: Why waste over 2000 years of experience?" pin really gave me a huge smile. And, to be honest, I felt a funny little tickle when I saw the "Obama: the Audacity of Inexperience" items at Cafe Press. Of course, if you really want to slip off the radar, you could go with "Chelsea in '16: The Pantsuits Have Been Passed to a New Generation."

While the pins are a lot of fun, my favorite souvenir in this election cycle has been the Presidential condoms. Practice Safe Policy is selling Obama and McCain condoms. The Obama-lactic states that one should "Use with good judgment," while the McCain membrane notes that it's "Old but not expired." The sheaths are priced at $9.95 for two, which seems fairly expensive. However, nobody ever said that Free Speech was cheap!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. It was incredibly hard for him to avoid slipping into shallow, puerile puns on this post.

The main challenge facing presidential hopefuls John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is to convince voters that they understand the needs of average Americans. Yet the more voters get to know them, the clearer it becomes that they lead lives that are far from ordinary.

McCain, Obama and Clinton all have prevailed against daunting odds to be among the most powerful people in the country. Their success has also made them celebrities and they have made tidy sums of money writing best-selling books. They have received a slew of awards from their many admirers and have been both lampooned and cheered as guests on "Saturday Night Live."

To understand what these presidential contenders will do if elected, voters need to first examine their respective political records. But we can also glean insights from taking a look at the personal experiences and individual choices these three remarkable people have made:

Mark Muller, the owner of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, blames Barack Obama: "He said all those people in the Midwest, you've got to have compassion for them because they're clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive." Muller went on to admit, however, that "We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns."

The irony-impervious Muller decided to take Obama's words as a challenge, and began offering free handguns with every vehicle purchase. Sales have quadrupled in the three days since the promotion began, and the company has sold more than thirty vehicles. Most customers have taken the free gun, a Kel-Tec .380 pistol, although Muller is also offering a $125 gas card for those patrons who don't want to carry a firearm in the glove compartment.

The irony, of course, is that Muller is doing a fantastic job of proving Obama's point. While we wait for the irony to sink in, however, Muller will continue to sell his road-rage special until May 31, 2008. Get your gas-guzzler and lethal weapon while supplies last!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. He's holding out for a catapult and Hummer special.

Income tax information is generally private, but in the case of presidential candidates, it's not. Their invasion of privacy makes for hours of fun for those of us interested in how much money others make. Here's how the numbers shook out for 2007 tax returns:

John McCain:
Adjusted gross income $386,527
Charitable contributions $105,467
Federal income tax $118,660
Actual tax return here (large file).

Other interesting information: McCain gave $105,467 to charity, which was 27% of his income. He also made just over $110,000 from books he's written.

My 6-year-old daughter was at a Super Bowl party less than 10 minutes when she jumped off a foot-high trampoline and twisted her ankle, causing it to swell. First thing monday morning, we headed to the orthopedic surgeon's office to confirm that Katie had a small fracture. She thinks the neon pink cast is really cool and she loved looking at the x-rays, but so far, her little spill cost me $1,000, which our health insurance, Anthem, should cover.

Aside from being relieved that the break wasn't worse, I can't help but think about what it must be like for the 45 million Americans without health insurance who must worry incessantly that an accident or illness could set them back tens of thousands of dollars.

Just last week, I watched a CNN newscast by medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who reported that health costs are the number one reason Americans file for bankruptcy. Voters' views on the healthcare crisis will likely play a role in the outcome on SuperTuesday, when 24 states hold primaries or caucuses to elect presidential nominees.